Super Mario Battle Royale Game Receives Takedown Notice From Nintendo

I completely understand Nintendo taking this stance and taking it down. But I really hope this is a 'proof of concept' to them. This would make for a fantastic Mario Maker 2 DLC mode. Nintendo specially selects community courses and adds them into a rotation... wow that would be fun

You know NL, you could've prevented this by not reporting on it...

Nintendo, once again not letting any one have fun with their toys.

Hopefully Nintendo is smart enough to make their own version for Switch... it would actually provide significant value to their online service.

Actually, they should also keep it as a free online PC game and make an Android/iOS version... what a great way to get people interested in Nintendo games.

Fair play to Nintendo they HAVE to protect their IP. They don’t want retro things like this ruining their generous 3 NES games a month offering on their online service. They really give the consumer what they want with value for money... so they can’t have retro stuff like this detracting from their own excellent offerings

Well, Nintendo couldn’t let this injustice stand!

I mean, they’ll try to sell us “Super Mario bros.” in several different formats, variations and other minor changes over the next few years, can’t let freeloaders muscle in on that sweet “Just one more version of an old game”-action!

That’s sarcasm, BTW.

Nintendo being Nintendo again. Nothing new here.

Its simple IP protection.
Youre not Nintendo and you dont have permission to use their IP assets.
Nintendo has to be seen to be protecting its IPs and they arent going judge every infringement individually, its is that mario yeah, send the cease and dissist order next.

"According to Gaming Reinvented, the game still looks a little too similar to the source material and unsurprisingly has the same 'level design and basic mechanics' as it. "

Maybe the way it looks and the exact level layout might still be an issue. However, basic mechanics and level design philosophy don't fall under copyright protection.

The big N will always be the last man standing.

How dare Nintendo protect its intellectual properties

might have helped if he didnt have a giant "give me money to run servers for this" on it

Give us Mario 99 please. On switch online. Remix levels as paid dlc. Thanks.

Better a cnd than ruining lives with lawsuits. Easy enough to swap out with free art.

He should have done it with Sonic. Sega would have backed the hell out of this.

Yep.. WE ALL KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!

1. "Developer" creates something using Nintendo's IP.
2. "Developer" goes to the media to seek attention.
3. Media reports on it, giving attention.
4. Nintendo takes down "developer".
5. "Developer" gets angry.
6. Media reports on that as well.

I'll make this really clear. Using someone else's work as your own without permission is THEFT. This 100% goes for creating a game using Mario. (or any other copyright protected IP). This is a crime. And instead of suing the hell out of the developer Nintendo simply gives them a takedown request.

What the developer should've done was go to Nintendo and say. "Hi Nintendo, we have a fantastic game idea we want to create using Mario's IP. We want to make a battle royale style of game using SMB. Do you want this?" This is what the Crypt of the Necrodancer developer did, and see here now we have Cadance of Hyrule.

This is no surprise.
I don't believe at all that a lot of the guys who do this sort of thing are just innocently making a fan game. They had to have known the cease and desist was going to come. What better way to make your game popular?
Take your idea, borrow Nintendos IP until it gains traction and they issue a cease and desist, which causes sites like this one to report on it, making your game even more well known and gaining sympathy from people who think it's okay to just use anyone elses IP.
Then just swap out the assets, since you've gotten what you need from the Nintendo IP. If the game was actually fun, people keep playing it because it didn't actually matter that Mario was in it. Mario was just the lure.
I'm fully convinced they know exactly what they're doing in using Nintendos IP.

@NOOGA eh Sonic is tougher to program and Alex Kidd doesn't have Mario's reach.

Good im glad it got taken down..and if they get mad to bad get over it

Of course it's Nintendo fans that'll excuse these s***** actions as "protecting their IP" and say that the developers are "lazy". Biggest bootlickers I've ever seen.

Well they've changed everything Nintendo could make any copyright claim on so now Nintendo has literally no say on the matter from this point forward.

And, with the changes in place, Gaming Reinvented's opinion that it's still "a little too similar to the source material" is utterly irrelevant too.

Lesson learned* : Be more imaginative, and draw some sprites of your own.

• Not learned. Never learned. Always the same thing, every time.

@Jayenkai Imagine how many people would never have given this a first look if the dev hadn't initially used Mario's art. . . .

Now think about how many people did play it, and will also play it even with the changes, just because it used Mario's art initially. . . .

It was a very smart move on the dev's part.

I understand why they take it down.
Maybe they could consider to try to make it themselfs

@TheBlue10 Are Nintendo not allowed to protect their IP?

It’s a pickle to be in I’m certain. There was speculation going round, that Nintendo waited a few days before coming down on the C64 port of SMB. Nintendo are legally obliged to protect their IP. If a fan gets away with an homage, what’s to stop countless developers jumping on the band wagon? It simply has to be stopped before it can get out of hand. Mario fits into a child friendly environment, I doubt it would take long before that got twisted.

Next time make your own game. I don’t know if I helped but every time NL reports something like this I send the link over to Nintendo’s Anti piracy email. Don’t steal other people’s hard work.

What the hell is wrong with these people, putting all this time and energy into fan projects that they KNOW will be taken down?

Just create indie games inspired by the IP, like Axiom Verge or Blossom Tales.

@sanderev the Ittl Dew dev's originally pitched the game to Nintendo as a Zelda game. Nintendo passed on it, but encouraged them to make the game. When it was completed, Nintendo heavily promoted it in the eshop. Nintendo is always portrayed as the draconian entity, but they are pretty reasonable if you do them right.

They should have bought it over..

@Matthew010 Protect their IP? From what, non-profit passion projects made out of love for the franchise and the company that don't try to compete with whatever Nintendo sells in any way? Oh poor them, guess they should go after fan art too, since people are drawing Mario without Ninty's permission and are goinna lose rights over him!

But now that it is not a Mario-related game no one will play it despite having the same similar gameplay.

@TheBlue10 Again, the dude was running a patreon for servers, and similarly, artists have been getting takedowns recently for having patreons dedicated to drawing Nintendo properties.
It's not exactly a "non-profit passion project" at that point.
Regardless, narcs like Ryu are pretty awful

@Cotillion some just use it to get jobs even if it's not with the actual company they're taking the IP. Others secretly just get sued.

Sorry, but the "Nintendo has to protect their IP" argument really holds no water when you consider that SEGA allows fan-made creations to flourish. By the logic of some people in the comments here, SEGA should've lost the rights to Sonic a long time ago for not "protecting" it.

SEGA even invited one of the fans to officially make a Sonic game, and it ends up being arguably the best ever made. SEGA does indeed do what Nintendon't, it seems.

Nintendo has been takedown crazy lately, even taking on artists who do fan art and art that is less than wholesome. Iwata and Reggie go, and everything goes all Law and Order with the big N.

But they still can't put Shantae in Smash or convince SeGA to get PSO on the switch.

The best you can expect from something like this is giving Nintendo the idea to try their own take on it. Where else do you see random creators just start cracking out their own versions or existing properties and the company or studio that actually owns it just says “oh, ok, I guess you’ve joined our team, then. Well, welcome aboard!”

It’s not really a case or “Nintendo being Nintendo”, it’s a case of Nintendo being a company like any other that owns a property popular enough to inspire someone to add their spin on it rather than spin off from it to do their own thing. Sure, use a popular property and you’ll get more attention to your idea. But that attention will eventually include the attention of the properties’ owners.

@AlphaElite beat me to it...

there some salty people on here defending the guy who created this game without nintendo permission on using the ip seriously if your going to created a fun game dont use other companies ips without suffering the consenquences.

This looks like an actual argument for these people always making games that they know Nintendo will shut down, finally.

Release the game, get attention, then keep it up just with a few modifications which cautious but unsuccessful people would have made at the beginning.

IMO fangames are harmless and shouldn't be taken down if they are free.
If money was involved as in like "pay money to play this fangame' then yes that deserves to be taken down by all means.
Fangames are like an artform in the same vein that fanart and inspired modded content exist.

Like for example the number of models in Garrys Mod taken from various games or the fanart people make of the characters they love.

A fangame is just like that and if it's open to the world to play, then it really is harmless, it's fine to provide monetary support to these projects but if you have to buy them that's a whole other issue.

It sucks cause I played both AM2R and Uranium, both were fantastic projects that were similarly loved by many. Such a shame Nintendo always does this

Come on, enough with the "Nintendo are evil"-angle already.

Dang. Just make it a Sonic game, for crying out loud!

People take this way to serious. The game was most likely created to pass time until SMM2 gets released (since almost all good level designers are done with SMM).

The game would have been dead within weeks of SMM2 anyway regardless of this cease and desist.

That game looked cool
But it's not really surprising, maybe Nintendo has ambitious plans for SMM2's multiplayer modes.

Does Nintendo think things like this are more important than making better improvements on their online service? I understand that this is their property, but they do like to take fun away from people including getting rid of roms. Those games are from companies that don’t even exist anymore.

Lol at the comparisons to Sega. They are currently a fraction the size of Nintendo with no modern consoles and an already shot reputation with Sonic. They can afford to be cool with the kids for a little chance at street cred.

This game in particular isn't the issue. If Nintendo lets this one slide, every idiot asset flipper will take it as a green light to make their version of Mario and soon you'll have confused consumers picking up the wrong product and thinking Nintendo has gone down hill. They have a huge audience that would never read this website or any like it, and Mario's brand recognition is one of the biggest in the world.

Nintendo probably views this as too close to Mario makers vs mode.

You can't just take someone else's IP to make your own product. You just can't. This is always gonna happen.

Why the absolute hell are people still trying to do this stuff? Idiocracy at its finest.

@KingBowser Free publicity from sites like Nintendolife. Twice. Once when the project is released and once when Nintendo takes it down.

@sanderev So people do this because they want to and don't care if Nintendo does a cease and desist

@KingBowser I'm not 100% against making a game like this, it's just fan art to me. However I'm against going public with it and seeking the media, like they did.

However fan art is not protected by law. It's still 100% illegal to do this, even when you don't publish it. But companies like Nintendo won't go after a private project you do in your basement and keep offline. They do however go after projects that are published to the public. They HAVE to.

Why?
1. Trademarks. They used the "Super Mario" trademark, if Nintendo didn't complain Nintendo could LOSE the right to the Super Mario trademark. This has happened before.
2. Copyrights. They use artwork and music from the original games.
3. Public opinion. If they would allow this project, but shut another project down they would lose face to the public.

@KingBowser a lot of people just enjoy the challenge of doing these things. It's like creating fan art.

And I had a blast while it lasted ^_^

Saw this coming a mile away

Nintendo pays millions to protect their IPs, I can't blame em for being strict. Fan made games being free doesn't help matters.Take AM2R for example; why would people pay $40 for Samus Returns on 3DS if they could download AM2R for free?

Speaking of SEGA, didn't they shutdown a fanmade Streets of Rage title? Regarding Sonic Mania, well yeah, when your own developer can't consistently make good Sonic games, maybe it's time for someone else to do it. Hiring a single indie dev. like Whitehead was smart financially.

fortunately people have made scripts that redirect the website to archives of the original mario sprites and music.

I already made this comment before on previous articles but I'll do it again anyways, here are a couple of posts by a game developer who explains the reasons Nintendo is against fan games in detail
https://askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/155487254913/why-do-companies-like-nintendo-or-square-enix/amp?__twitter_impression=true

https://www.google.com/amp/askagamedev.tumblr.com/post/163909523223/i-know-your-stance-on-fangames-is-very-dont/amp

This just proves how Nintendo needs to make Super Mario 99

@TheBlue10 and otthers of similar thoughts;

I'm not against fan games personally but you have to understand there is a lot more to it than a big company being harsh.

Imagine if Nintendo were about to release a similar product just after a fan game was making the rounds. People may get confused as to who's is who's or may not support the official game as hey,there's a free one.

Another reason is if they allowed everyone to make fan games,free or not then there is no way to guarantee the general piblic will know what product is official and suddenly, "wow Mario games are utter garbage now. The hit detection is awful and the levels are a random mess"
So people will no longer support them.

Finally, it's very easy to see a giant corporation as a bad guy but imagine if it was just a single person who's art keeps getting stolen. Or better yet think about the actual thousands of people who work for them and rely on Nintendo for their livelihood and that allowing fan games to exist could damage that.

@Blackpaper84 PSO is on the Switch though.

@Ralizah
Well the guy in his video said it was his first game he made. And he was just messing around for fun, maybe put it in his portfolio. He knew that a CaD would come and wanted most people to try it out before it inevitable happened.

I guess some people just want to see what genres they can put together to make an interesting game. I'd imagine some people would like Candace and Zelda to be a thing (maybe just a quick side or dungeon). Tetris and battle royal, etc

I would love to see a MetroidVania with Mario mixed into one game. Graphics of maybe hand drawn (hollow Knight or Ditto), explorable new locations, and even mushroom kingdom.

@JayJ With the amount of Mario games Nintendo has released, it really actually could be Mario 99!

So many comments again Nintendo. I wonder how they would fare stealing another big developer's IP like Square Enix. Remember Chrono Revolution?

You mentioned how this would soon happen in the last article... How is this also a news piece now?

Company protecting their IP. Nothing new here. Nothing unusual.

A MARKETING GENIUSES GUIDE TO GAIN FAME AND POPULARITY:
1: Use Nintendo IP for your low quality hobby game.
2: Make sure to highly publicize your illegal use of private property to go viral.
3: Wait for Nintendo's lawyers to respond.
4: Change the art to the only generic thing you're able to make yourself and act indignantly victimized.
5: ????
6: PROFIT!

Take a shot everytime you see a comment with more than 5 dislikes here

@Ryu_Niiyama wow you really should be given an award for your principles... Why do we need police officers when we have people like you. I hope you also always pretend the receipt when you buy something, otherwise you could be a little hypocritical...

They should seize the idea, work with the developer and get it as a free to play for the online service.

@Dakotastomp Play-doh, Lego, or any other toy company wouldn't let you either. You'd have to buy it first or received from someone who bought it. What's your point?

@DABYX I don't think anyone would confuse a fan game, especially one that explicitly says it's not an official product and instead a fan-project that also promotes the official product, as something made by Nintendo.

Also, the argument that fan games take away from an official product's sales is absurd. No one in their right mind would look at a Mario fangame and think "yeah I'm so going to download that instead of paying for the new Mario game!". Fan games are made for fun and to show love to the franchise just like fan art, they're not made to compete with the official games, which, are tiers and tiers above in terms of quality with what you can see in a fan-game.

Also, this situation isn't comparable to art theft in any stretch. Art theft is reposting someone's art on a different platform (and sometimes the same one it was stolen from) without any credit and/or claiming it's your own. Fan-games don't do that.

You know what Nintendo could've done? Invite the guy to make an actual Mario Royale game with them. Capcom did it with the people making the RE2 fan-remake (after telling them to stop, of course). What's stopping Nintendo from doing that?
Of course if anything, at most Nintendo is going to make their own Mario Royale game.

@AndreaF96 Haha, why thank you! Just doing my part to be an honest human being. You have a very wonderful day though!

Edit: Also I would love to live in a world where people were good, decent and honest enough that we didn’t have to have the threat of laws and police. Companies have to protect their IP because people would rather steal. Since no one dies we pretend it’s ok. That is some low hanging fruit right there. So the attempt at an insult was a compliment. Thank you again.

oh come on dont be a dicktendo.

Surprise its back just with a different name and characters/levels. http://www.infernoplus.com/royale/#main

@sanderev He was just making it for fun, he even said he didn't really care and knew it would happen. SEGA and Capcom are cool about fan games, Nintendo is still stuck in the past with this sort of thing.

@Dahn_ My point is that when it's for free, Either it's a F2P game or a let's play video for a YouTube channel, or sometimes even art, Nintendo will cease and desist it when nobody is even trying to make money off of it.

@Jokerwolf Sega and capcom aren't very active these days anymore.

@Dakotastomp I've never seen a lets play video been taken down by Nintendo. Also nothing is free. Even these guys had ads on the site and wanted donations to keep it running. That's not free. Also I've NEVER seen Nintendo take down fanart.

@sanderev That doesn't matter.

@Jokerwolf Yes it does. Nintendo is very active in making multiple new games each year.

Allowing criminals to steal their IPs would limit in how much Nintendo could sell.

@sanderev Well I still support Nintendo but not them being dicks about fan games that are free press and in some cases better than their actual games, AM2R was an example of that and why I did not buy Samus Returns.

@Jokerwolf To me that's the perfect example WHY Nintendo NEEDS and SHOULD always do this.

If those criminals (using someone else's IP is theft) didn't steal Nintendo's work you would have bought Nintendo's game. You didn't because they did.

@sanderev I did not buy it in protest to their decision to remove it.

@Jokerwolf I bought it because I wanted to support Nintendo.

@sanderev Good for you, but I will not support their anti-consumer practices like this. AM2R was far better anyways.

@sanderev So all those Sonic Hacks fan made games that are still on the web today are considered theft to you? Then based on current games, and quality, These thieves are doing a better job at making games than Sega or Nintendo can. Also, yes Nintendo does sometimes give artists a C&D notice for their OCs. I remember stories back on Tumblr where someone would make a Pokemon OC and Nintendo would claim they are using their IPs as their own Characters. Just because you never heard or seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

@Jokerwolf Question: how would you know AM2R was better than Samus Returns if you by your own admission never bought the game which in a part also means you never legally played the game too? And don't use the 'i watched let's plays of the game so that was enough' excuse cuz that only works on the most obvious broken and glitch out this-is-still-a-beta-but-I-want-your-money games and everything else you have tried it to get a real feel for it, watching someone else play it won't give you that. So riddle me that if you will.

anyone viewing this article now, it's gone beyond fully being changed to DMCA royale to just being gone forever now

@Noid You know that Nintendo has a team looking for this stuff already. They probably found it before these sites had an article about it

@Stocksy they have to protect their IP or they can lose it under Japanese law

@TheBlue10 they had ads placed on the site that you go to to play the game and they were asking for donations to help maintain the game servers. That isnt a non profit use of the IP

@Blackpaper84 PSO is coming to switch

@LilligantLover they were running a patreon asking for money to run the servers for the game they made. That isnt non profit at all

@Uzukage A majority of sites have ads to keep them running, and the ads, as well as the patreon, in no way make the fan-game a for profit one. The guy had the site and the patreon way, way up before Mario Royale. It's a strech to use that as "evidence" that the fan game was for profit.

Also, if that were the case with Japanese laws, then why hasn't Capcom lost their rights to Mega Man with the multitude of popular MM fangames that are out there? Shouldn't MM be public domain by now?

Also, what's stopping Nintendo from inviting the people who do fangames to work with them? Remember the fanmade Resident Evil 2 remake that Capcom took down so they can invite the creators of it to work on the official RE2 remake?

@TheBlue10 They had the patreon set up to keep the servers for the Mario game up. That is profit right there. They should have been using their own money to do so not others. Capcom doesn't make many Megaman games and they aren't as big of an IP like Mario is

@Uzukage Strawman argument. I shouldn't even need to explain why.
Also the importance of the IP and whenever the owner of the IP uses it much or not doesn't matter. The laws are the same all around and should be adhered all around.

@TheBlue10 again it isn't the same. And who's to say they have or haven't had issues with their licenses?